Been a long time, but Zep still rock ’n’ rolls

Iain’t fooling. The remaining members of Led Zeppelin are gonna take you back to schoolin’ with “Celebration Day,” a sprawling, two-hour concert album featuring 16 Led Zep classics.

If you are a rock ’n’ roll purist, Led Zeppelin ranks anywhere from one to five among all-time great rock ’n’ roll bands. A recent recipient of the 2012 Kennedy Center Honors, Led Zeppelin is rock ’n’ roll royalty of the highest order. And listening to “Celebration Day” (available either as a double CD or deluxe 2CD/2DVD package; do yourself a favor and go for the deluxe), it’s quite evident that Led Zeppelin are still our overlords.

There’s a whole lot to love about “Celebration Day.” Recorded live five years ago at London’s O2 Arena (as a tribute to Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun), “Celebration Day” is not only Led Zeppelin’s first headlining show in 27 years. It’s a show for the rock ’n’ roll history books.

Robert Plant still has one of the most distinct and indelible voices in rock. Guitar God Jimmy Page still has the licks and conquers all he surveys. Blistering bassist John Paul Jones still has the chops on the four-strings, as well as the keys. And Jason Bonham (son of Led Zep’s late drummer John “Bonzo” Bonham, whose 1980 death led the group to disband) is a chip off the old block.

Led Zeppelin finds its way back to the same old jam on “Good Times Bad Times, the lead-off track of the band’s 1969 self-titled studio debut, which also serves as the opening number for this stellar live performance. Hearing the opening power-chords is a goose-pimply adrenaline-rush … and that’s only a couple of seconds, if that. Plant, who can still hit the high notes, earnestly sings about how in the days of his youth his woman left home for a brown-eyed man but he “still don’t seem to care.” Well, the listener cares immensely, especially when all the precision parts of this fine-tuned rock ’n’ roll juggernaut come together.

A murkier-sounding “Ramble On” isn’t instantly recognizable until Tolkien-enthusiast Plant weaves his vocal wizardry and pontificates how in the darkest depths of Mordor, he met a girl so fair but “Gollum, and the evil one crept up and slipped away with her, her, her .... yeah.” Thanks in great part to Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, the song is more cheeky than cool with its Middle-earth love-triangle references. But the song confidently shakes and shimmies and Page scorches the stratosphere with his guitar.

The bluesy, cocksure rocker “Black Dog” is still the perfect combination of sexual swagger and strutty guitar chords, courtesy of Plant and Page, respectively. Not only are Plant’s coos and Page’s snarly, sinewy guitar grooves “gonna make you burn, gonna make you sting,” the two still provide one of the perfect and most memorable call and responses in rock.

What would a Led Zeppelin concert be without a series of impressive but potentially exhaustive blues jams? The first is the 11-minute epic “In My Time of Dying.” Showcasing how Led Zeppelin is deeply indebted to the blues, Plant gut-wrenchingly faces his mortality and his inevitable end while Page unmercifully swings his mighty ax like the Grim Reaper swinging his scythe.

The heavy-duty rocker “Nobody’s Fault But Mine” plays out like a duet between Plant’s incomparable larynx and Page’s incendiary guitar licks before erupting into a crunchy chords and crashing drum beat onslaught.

Long before there was Goth, there was Led Zeppelin’s nocturnal, doom-laden mood-piece, “No Quarter.” With the dogs of doom snapping at his heels, Plant is harrowing, hellish and hypnotic but it’s Jones’ dirge-like keyboards that make this spine-tingling death ditty so epic, so much so that you can still feel the presences of death permeating in the mix.

Not only does Led Zeppelin capture its rich legacy with “Dazed and Confused,” the band propels the legend to new heights. Not nearly as self-indulgent as the live version on “The Song Remains the Same” soundtrack, “Dazed and Confused” kicks in with Jones’ slow but ominous bass crawl, followed by Page’s demonic screeching on his guitar. Plant convincingly sounds like a man at wit’s end, wrestling with tongue-wagging demons (most significantly, one with a “soul of a woman created below”) while Page’s violin bow-stroked guitar sounds like a dinosaur woken up from its deep and restless slumber.

Does anybody remember laughter? That’s a rhetorical question. One of the most beloved and scrutinized rock songs of all times, “Stairway to Heaven,” hasn’t lost any splendor or grandeur. Whether there is a bustle in your hedgerow or the piper’s calling you to join him, it is still as thought-provoking and awe-inspiring as you first heard it, with Plant’s mystical, wood-nymph musings equally matched by Page’s magical guitar playing.

With the intensity and might to move mountains and sail across the sea of years, “Kashmir” is an awe-inspiring, spacey and spiritual outing that will leave you literally breathless. Besides arguably being Plant’s best performance on the album (and that’s saying a lot), the veteran singer is spellbinding as “a traveler of both time and space.” With its Middle-Eastern instrumentation colliding with rock ’n’ roll orchestration, this sprawling rock ’n’ roll epic is massive without sounding bloated and is still a life-altering blast.

Page shoots some of the coolest, heaviest and instantly recognizable guitars riffs in rock history, while Plant promises (and delivers) every inch of his love without the aid of Viagra on the raw and riveting “Whole Lotta Love.”

It might have been a long time since they collectively rock and rolled, but Led Zeppelin proves long before they close with “Rock and Roll” that they are still a rock ’n’ roll force to be reckoned with. Now, if only they would heed the call of Valhalla, get off their collective thrones on Mount Olympus (or Mordor) and do what every diehard Led Zep fans is dying for: embark on a full-fledge tour.

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